Skills forecast

Cedefop Skills Forecast provides comprehensive information on future labour market trends in Europe. The forecast acts as an early warning mechanism to help alleviating potential labour market imbalances and support different labour market actors in making informed decisions.

Cedefop Skills Forecast is widely recognised. In 2010, Cedefop received a mandate by the Council conclusions on “New skills for new jobs: the way forward” to forecast trends in skill supply and demand for Europe every two years. The Skills forecast is also one of the key building blocks of the Skills Panorama under the flagship initiative Agenda for New Skills and Jobs of the Europe 2020 strategy.

The Skills Forecast does not intend to replace skills anticipation and forecasting initiatives taking place at national level, which are often built around more sophisticated methodologies and may offer a greater level of detail. The strength of the Cedefop Skills Forecast is that it uses harmonised data and a single methodology to make results comparable across countries which can be aggregated to provide an overall picture of labour market trends and skill development in the EU. The results cover all EU Member States plus a few more countries.

The Cedefop results and methodology are validated by national experts representing a wide range of expertise including academics, labour market economists, econometricians and statisticians. The national experts represent all 33 countries covered by the Cedefop skills forecast. The list of selected national experts is available here.